Alaska 2024: Roll 21 - Independence Mine and Hatcher Pass
We spent a couple of days in Homer and then in Anchorage. In Homer we were able to book a boat trip on Kachemak Bay where we were able to take Ripley and Kenai. The boat excursion was well received by everyone in our little party and both Ripley and Kenai had a great time.
I didn't get a chance to shoot any film for a couple of days because the weather turned a bit nasty after we left Homer. In Anchorage we restocked, did some laundry, and celebrated Katy's birthday.
Our next stop was going to be to a historic mine called Independence Mine, and taking the road over Hatcher Pass.
Once we started our way inland, the thick cloud cover cleared and we started to see blue skies. I decided that some color film as in order so I loaded another roll of Kodak 250D. To get this film into the 35mm canisters we use in our cameras, the 400 foot rolls have to be respooled by hand. This respooling will sometimes cause the part attached to the reel to be exposed a tiny bit as part of the process. This isn't a major issue usually because when you reach the end of the roll there is usually a little bit left at the end. One of the interesting things about the XPAN camera is when you load a roll it immediately unrolls the film into the camera and you shoot from the end to the beginning of the roll. Because of this, when you use respooled film, you will usually loose half of the first frame like the image above.
The Independence Mine State Historical Park is located in the Talkeetna Mountains on the way to Hancher Pass. It is about 20 miles alway from Palmer, AK.
The mine was active from the 1930's to the 1950's with a break in the 1940's for World War II. In 1974 it was added to the National Register of Historic Places and in 1980 was donated to the state of Alaska.
The state established the Independence Mine State Historical Park which is what we are able to visit today.
Today when you visit you are able to walk around the grounds and see buildings in pretty much the same condition as they were left when the operation shut down. Littered around the property are machine parts and bits of mining equipment.
They were doing some renovations, I believe painting mostly to the buildings while we were there.
In addition to the buildings and equipment you can also see the large tailings piles as you can see in the picture above.
Not all of the buildings looked so great.
We saw a couple of hikers that were heading off into the backcountry from the parking area. I hope they had a good time and weren't carried off by mosquitos.
After we had lunch and tried, unsuccessfully, to get Ripley to do her business, we started our drive to Hatcher Pass, the second stop for the day.
Hatcher Pass isn't horribly high at just 3,886 ft. We aren't that far from the ocean yet. As you reach the pass you are greeted by Gold Cord Lake which is nestled right there in the pass.
There were actually quite a few people that were stopped here when we visited. We had to drive slowly so that we could make sure to get a parking spot. Once we found one we climbed a small hill above the lake to see some views out in the valley off the other side of the pass.
It turns out that this is a great place to do some paragliding. The area we climbed up to had two guys who were in different stages of launching so we stayed and watched them for a while.
Once one person was off, the next person would walk up to the launching spot, do a final check of their gear and then launch themselves into the air. It was pretty cool to watch.
We weren't the only ones who had a good time up on the pass. There were folks coming and going the whole time we were there.
I liked how the color turned out on this roll. I especially liked the shots that had some blue sky in them as I think those turned out the best.